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I had 5 hours to myself today in the car as I drove back and forth to make a quick family visit in Irricana. I took this opportunity to catch up on a bunch of Age of Persuasion podcasts. I have really grown to enjoy Terry's podcasts both for their entertainment value, but probably more for their educational value, as I am learning a lot about marketing.
As I listened to his podcast entitled "Being There: Selling Experiences" a lot of things came to my mind. At Transcend, we work very hard to make our customer's experience more than just a great cup of coffee. We are dead serious about the quality of the drink, and work tirelessly to ensure that the bean is roasted so as to celebrate each lot of green we bring into the country. We are committed to making the experience for each patron better with each passing day. In short, we are never satisfied, I am never satisfied. I am so proud of all of my team, but they know, and I know, that we can always find ways to do it better than before. So I believe in the overarching experience that our customers have when they walk into the roastery, and now the new coffee bar at Garneau.
Having said all of this, we are about to launch some radio ads with CKUA. They sent out a draft version of their proposed copy, and frankly it left me underwhelmed. CKUA isn't into sound affects and flashy advertising, but rather focus on simple copy read while some music plays in the background. As a staunch supporter and listener, I appreciate the station and their approach to programming. As an advertiser however, I wish I had a bit more control over the way our ads will sound. However, the copy needs to be right and that means engaging our the listener, and offering them some benefit, some reason to explore the world and products of Transcend Coffee.
OK, enough of all of that, because it is not really the reason why I wanted to write this post. One of the things featured on Terry's podcast was a reference to Starbucks coffee, and their focus on experience. Joseph Pine, the co-author of the book Experience Economy writes about Starbucks, "a cup of coffee is only worth a few cents, but when packaged and sold at a supermarket it is now worth .25 cents, if it is brewed and served by a waiter it's worth $2.00. But if you are allowed to design your own coffee and it is brewed in front of your eyes and you can enjoy it in the setting of a Starbucks cafe, it easily sells for $5.00". Terry goes on to talk about the theatre of coffee, the experience of the brewing process, which makes the product worth more. It is this aspect of the podcast which I wanted to comment on. While I can't dismiss the "theatre" aspect of the Starbucks experience, and the millions of folks who have ascribed to the new language created by Starbucks; what I can take issue with is the fundamental error in the math outlined above.
Firstly let me categorically state that a cup of coffee is not worth a few cents. This is the erroneous premise which dominates our culture and economy. In truth, coffee is highly undervalued. Coffee is traded world wide as a commodity, and while earning somewhere in the realm of 80 billion a year, it should be worth at least three times that. The problem lies with the fact that most farmers get paid less for their coffee than it costs them to grow it, and as such, quality rarely comes into the picture. If consumers were charged more for quality and not just the "theatre" spectacle, farmers would get paid more, and the quality could go up, regardless of whether the cup include a spectacle. Starbucks has suffered from this in North America, as they have focused on the experience and have sacrificed quality along the way. This is no more evident than when an independent cafe is situated in close proximity to a Starbucks, and is focused on quality. The evidence shows that "theatre" can't compete with quality, and is further borne out by both the rash of closures of Starbucks stores across the continent, and the arrival of new Starbucks "inspired" cafes sprouting up in Seattle which are harkening back to the early "quality focused" roots of the company.
I guess all I want to say is that their is no substitute for real quality. And in the new age of persuasion, where all the chatter is loud and parity is the name of the game, quality does in fact set you apart. Having said that, quality alone is no excuse for bad customer service, and certainly does not excuse a company from giving their patrons an amazing experience. At the end of the day, it comes down to priorities. At Transcend, we work from the premise that our quality can always improve, along with our customer service, and ultimately the customers experience. OK, that was a very long post... keep schooling me Mr. Age of Persuasion!
